Life on a Limb

 

Life is precarious, like living on the slender limb of a tree. Most of the time we don’t know this. Once death moves closer, there’s no escaping this fragile truth.

Death moved into our home again three weeks ago tomorrow. Bob started out the morning fine, even declared he was going jogging for the first time in years. By the afternoon—unrelated to the jog—his stomach became distended and he experienced “discomfort.” He became like a bear hibernating in a cave, not wanting to interact and holed up in our bedroom with the lights out. He tried exercises, he tried yoga poses, he tried everything to get his system moving so he could find relief.

He began throwing up. I thought he should have fluids based on my little knowledge of dehydration, so I made him a cup of tea. Turns out, fluids are not always a good prescription or solution.

He threw up more and after the last time, as I sat at the foot of the bed holding his hand, he told me to call 9-1-1.

Within minutes, while still on the phone with a woman instructing me what to do if Bob had a heart attack, the paramedics arrived, and the house filled with young uniformed men. Before I knew it, Bob was whisked out of our home and I was alone with our Golden Retriever. I wondered if I’d told him I loved him and ran outside into the dark night just in time to watch the ambulance doors close. I walked back to the house assuring myself that since we always said I love you to each other, he knew I loved him.

That was on Monday. I didn’t see him again until Sunday afternoon.

COVID affects not only families who have loved ones hospitalized with this disease, it affects us all. Bob and I are fortunate to live in an area with a minimal number of cases. Even so, COVID made it impossible for me to see my husband while he was hospitalized and even more difficult to get information from nurses who were overwhelmed. If we lived in Los Angeles, our hometown and a city with the most cases of COVID in our country, the ambulance most likely would not have come for Bob and he would have died at home.

We were lucky. An ambulance did come, and they did take him to the hospital and his life was saved. But I couldn’t be with him and had to wait six days wondering if I would ever see him again.

His condition was serious and then critical. The day after he arrived, the doctor scheduled him for surgery but thought there was time, so he wasn’t the first surgery scheduled. Fortunately, the surgeon visited Bob and realized he needed to get into surgery STAT, and the patient who was about to be operated on had to wait.

As soon as Bob was put under, his vitals plummeted and the doctor and nurses worked hard to prevent him from dying. They were able to stabilize him and continue with the surgery only to discover that inside him 100 cm (3.37 feet) of his small intestine was dead. They removed the dead portion, sutured the now disconnected sections together, and stapled the incision that spanned his belly.

I knew Bob was going to have surgery and had asked the last nurse I spoke with to please let me know when he was going in. No one ever called. Hours passed. I called more than once until finally, someone spoke to me and told me he was in surgery. She was not reassuring when I asked her to please have the doctor call me when the surgery was over. I could hear the quiver in my tearful voice saying to her, “I understand you’re very busy, but you have to understand that you have the person I love the most in the world.” Her voice softened, and she said she’d let the doctor know.

The surgeon was kind enough to call me right after the surgery to fill me in on Bob’s prognosis. Bob was in critical condition and the doctor had sent him to the ICU. If the doctor hadn’t called, I don’t know when I might have known where Bob was or even if he was still alive.

I couldn’t see him or talk to him and had to rely on finding a nurse who had time to speak to me. Fortunately, the first ICU nurse who answered was taking care of him and she had a wonderful sense of humor. With a laugh, she relayed that she had told Bob that he “suffered from noassatall.” No-ass-at-all. He’d lost a significant amount of weight. A lifetime as an athlete working out daily mattered little, and he was now skin and bones.

Once Bob was released from the ICU, we could speak to each other. The poor guy was suffering. The night he arrived, they’d put a tube down his throat into his stomach, a procedure he described as like being drowned and murdered. They also catheterized him. Both tubes still uncomfortably remained. Because of the tube, his throat hurt, and he was only able to speak to me for a few minutes at a time. Most of our conversation was about what he was experiencing and reaffirming our love.

I took a care kit for him to the hospital. Of course, I couldn’t go up to his room. Even so, they checked my temperature and personal information before taking the bag containing his phone charger, iPad, and some clean clothes I hoped he’d get to wear when he came home.

The days and nights without him were long. Scary thoughts and what ifs tried their best to nest in my head. I didn’t allow them. I’d learned long ago that worrying never changes the outcome, so I didn’t give in to worry. I discovered that I’d internalized all those philosophies about coping and life that I’d collected for many decades, and they served me well. For a long time, I’ve believed it important to collect our philosophies before we need them, and this is something I highly recommend to everyone.

Bob came home late on a Sunday afternoon, now two weeks ago. He’s recovering, but it is a tenuous, moment to moment, challenging, jagged, uncertain path.

No one can assure us this won’t happen again. This is the third time in the past two years that he’s almost died, and we can’t know if he’ll be lucky like the cat with nine lives and survive another crisis.

And so, although living on a limb, we go on as we always have, finding joy wherever we can and grateful to be alive for another day to love each other.